The executives will have to explain how Facebook
allowed Cambridge Analytica to scrape huge amounts of Facebook
data without the company's or users' knowledge.

The head of the parliamentary committee said he still
wanted to hear from Zuckerberg directly.

Mark Zuckerberg has refused to appear directly before British
politicians to explain Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica
scandal - and is offering to put senior executives in the firing
line instead.

Rebecca Stimson, Facebook's head of public policy in the UK,
responded to calls from the Conservative politician Damian
Collins that Zuckerberg appear before a select committee inquiry
into fake news.

She wrote to Collins: "Facebook fully recognises the level of
public and Parliamentary interest in these issues and support
your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most
senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative
position to answer your questions. As such, Mr. Zuckerberg has
personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available
to give evidence in person to the Committee."

The "deputies" offered up to MPs are two long-serving Facebook
executives: the chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer and the
chief product officer Chris Cox.

You can read the letter in full via this tweet from the Bloomberg
reporter Joe Mayes:

Collins responded to Facebook's letter in a statement Tuesday. He
said "we would still like to hear from Mr Zuckerberg as well" but
said that the committee was "very happy to invite Mr Cox to give
evidence."

Collins also released a written statement about
Zuckerberg's decision not to give evidence:

"Facebook has got many questions to answer that their executives
have failed to answer in previous appearances before our
Committee. As Mark Zuckerberg's deputy we hope that Chris Cox has
the sufficient authority and operational responsibility to
concretely answer these questions.

"Given the seriousness of these issues we still believe that Mark
Zuckerberg is the right person to give evidence, and would like
him to confirm if he will make himself available to the
Committee. He stated in interviews that if he is the right person
to appear he will appear. We think he is the right person and
look forward to hearing from him."

Both of the Facebook executives willing to give evidence, Stimson
wrote, report directly to Zuckerberg. Schroepfer
has previously commented on the role of fake news and Russian
meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Cox has not
commented on the scandal so prominently, but he's an interesting
choice and, along with the chief operating officer Sheryl
Sandberg,
is considered one of the most important executives at
Facebook.

Collins called for Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence before the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee
earlier this month, when The Observer reported that the political
research firm Cambridge Analytica improperly scraped millions of
Facebook user profiles via a third-party app. That data may then
have been used for "psychographic" profile and to target US
voters more precisely with political ads, though this is not
clear.

It isn't clear whether any of this Facebook data was used to
target voters during the UK's Brexit vote in 2016, though this is
partly what Collins will try to establish during the inquiry.